Joan's truth

The solution was obvious. Paul didn’t really have anything to fear. Among the girls there weren’t any leering perverts. Whatever happened tonight, I highly doubted he would come away feeling offended. Not so for Joan. Etiquette dictated that you shouldn’t go for the same person too often. By picking her, I took some of the weight off, for now. “Joan, truth or dare?” I asked, and took a sip from my cup of wine. This was going to be a long evening, and we all needed staying power.

She didn’t hesitate. “Truth,” she said, like she was afraid I was going to dare her to pour boiling oil over her own head. Not that I expected anything different.

“Okay. What’s something you keep secret that you brought to Bean?” I asked.

It was the tamest question in the world, but she started blushing anyway. “Umm,” she said.

I wanted to promise her that it wasn’t a big deal and that she didn’t really have to answer if she didn’t want to. Even Jack wasn’t such an asshole that he would make her do a line over something so simple. But it was only going to get worse from here, and she needed to get started somewhere.

“Well, I guess there’s my stuffed animal. She’s a rabbit named Faith.” Her eyes flicked over to Molly, maybe trying to gauge whether her roommate had noticed the fake creature. “I only bring her out when I’m feeling really bad. Which is silly, I know, but it helps.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” I said. “Back home I have a stuffed cow. I left it with my dog Tracy so he wouldn’t miss me too much.” That wasn’t actually true. Tracy had destroyed the stuffy years ago, but I was just trying to make Joan feel at home.

She smiled. “Aw, that’s so sweet,” she said. A beat passed, and she remembered that we were in the middle of a game. “What am I supposed to do next again?” she asked.

Lea got up to borrow the wine bottle from Harry. As she filled the solo cup, she explained. “Now you pick someone to take their turn. It can be anyone you want,” she said.

The poor girl didn’t know how to play it cool for one second. She looked right at Paul, and he looked right back at her. The look they shared was like something out of Jane Austen. I didn’t know why it hadn’t happened between them yet, even if I didn’t know what ‘it’ was in Joan’s moral system. At this point she finally hesitated. It was too late to do anything but eager, but that wasn’t what she was worried about. This was all nerves. At long last she made herself say,

“Paul, truth or dare?”